Keep the money flowing, boys

It's been a banner year for people who think that corporations, industries, and big money donors don't have enough influence and power within our political system. First there was the Supreme Court affirming the rights of corporations to spend as much money as they want in our elections. Now, we have a Congressional ethics panel affirming the right of our elected betters to trade votes and influence in return for campaign contributions.

The House ethics committee ruled Friday that seven lawmakers who steered hundreds of millions of dollars in largely no-bid contracts to clients of a lobbying firm had not violated any rules or laws by also collecting large campaign donations from those contractors.

In a 305-page report, the ethics committee declared that lawmakers are free to raise campaign money from the very companies they are benefiting so long as the deciding factors in granting those "earmarks" are "criteria independent" of the contributions. The report served as a blunt rejection of ethics watchdogs and a different group of congressional investigators, who have contended that in some instances the connection between donations and earmarks was so close that it had to be inappropriate.

Finally! I was worried for a second there that the nakedly shady relationship between corporate donations and earmarks would be seen for the open graft and corruption that it is.

Thankfully we have a supposed ethics panel to tell us that "Simply because a member sponsors an earmark for an entity that also happens to be a campaign contributor does not, on these two facts alone, support a claim that a member's actions are being influenced by campaign contributions," and that as long as there is some nebulous, invisible "independent criteria" for handing over million and billions of government contracts in return for a couple thousand in campaign contributions, everything is copacetic. Sure that kind of thing might look like and, in most cases, actually be pay-for-play, but.... it isn't. Because.... HEY LOOK OVER THERE!

Whew! We almost lost the self-perpetuating low ethical and moral standards of Congress. Some form of common sense and a pointing out of the obvious was not allowed to worm its way into the conversation or block off the money spigot between our elected betters and our corporate masters. We, as a country, have dodged that bullet.